Name ______

Supplement to Chapter 16: Using Language

You have proven your ability to mirror a speech format with conventional topic points, sub-points, transitions, and references. Now, let’s move from that minivan delivery into an Aston Martin Lagonda. This needs style and a toolbox of rhetorical tricks!

The Trick / My Application
118: Use repetition of key words and phrases.
“Don't tell me we can't change.
Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.
Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can seize our future.”
Source: Sen. Barack Obama's remarks after he won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina.
120: Use concrete words to solidify abstract concepts.
Example: (See the textbook)
120: Create vivid imagery.
Suggest these elements of the topic:
Visual (sight)
Auditory (sounds)
Olfactory (smells)
Tactile (texures)
Gustatory (tastes)
120: Create a fresh simile.
“Our dependence on foreign oil is like a heroin addict’s desperation for the drug supplier.”
120: Create a fresh metaphor.
Education has been riding a digital train that has nearly derailed.
123: Use anaphora (the deliberate repetition of identical phrases to introduce a series of related items.)
Example: For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Source: Obama Inaugural Address
20th January 2009
123: Sprinkle alliteration.
Invoke parallel phrases and sentences.
“. . . we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . . .”
Source: Winston Churchill. June 4, 1940.
"We Shall Fight on the Beaches." House of Commons.